A Fully Trained Actor Reduced to the Status of a Bum

Oh actors, poor loves. They just don’t get enough attention do they? Centrelinked decided to do something about it in Oscar’s week by celebrating anyone who has been name checked in song. There’s more than you think – and that’s just James Dean songs. Names of actors in brackets if not in the title.

What Got Played
• 20th Century Fox Fanfare – London Symphony Orchestra
• Robert de Niro’s Waiting – Bananarama
• Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz
• Jo Jo's Jacket - Steve Malkmus and the Jicks (Yul Brynner)
• Lenny Valentino – the Auteurs (Rudolph Valentino - possibly)
• Scream - The Stuntcar Drivers (Neve Campbell)
• Rattlesnakes – Lloyd Cole and the Commotions (Eve Marie Saint)
• John Wayne is Big Leggy – Hayze Fantayze
• Look at me (I’m Sandra Dee) – Stockard Channing (Sandra Dee, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Troy Donahue, Elvis)
• The Unknown Stuntman – Lee Majors (too many to mention)
• Purple Underwear (Michael Caine from Get Carter)
• Michael Caine – Madness
• Mohammed Ali and all his friends – the Lovely Eggs (Kirstie Ally)
• Raquel – Neon Neon (Raquel Welch)
• Bruce Lee – Underworld
• Lee Remick – the Go-Betweens
• Fanny Ardant et Moi – Vincent Delerme
• Initials BB – Serge Gainsbourg (Brigitte Bardot)
• Tom Courtney - Yo La Tengo
• Julie Christie - Stephen Duffy
• Grace Kelly Blues – Eels
• Like Dylan in the Movies - Belle and Sebastian (Bob Dylan)
• Marlon JD – Manic Street Preachers (Marlon Brando)
• (He’ll Never Be) An Ol’ Man River – TISM (River Phoenix)

Ran Out of Time (or usurped)
• Tom Baker – Human League (Tom Baker of Dr Who fame)
• Just like Fred Astaire – James
• Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle – Nirvana
• Butterfly McQueen – The Boo Radleys
• I helped Patrick McGoohan Escape - the Times
• I Hate Nerys Hughes – Half Man Half Biscuit
• Kylie's got a Crush on Us – Teenage Fanclub (Kylie Minogue)
• Zombie Zoo – Tom Petty (Boris Karloff)
• Shoot Doris Day – Super Furry Animals
• Michael Douglas - Neon Neon
• The Right Profile – the Clash (Montgomery Clift – post accident)
• Sean Penn Blues – Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
• Clark Gable – The Postal Service
• Celluloid Heroes - The Kinks (Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Bela Lugosi, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, George Sanders and Mickey Rooney)

Suggestions and Requests
• Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus or Nouvelle Vague
• Lee Remick – Hefner
• You Jane – Stephen Cummings (Kris Kristopherson and Genevieve Bujold)
• Frank Sinatra – Cake
• Hackensack – Fountains of Wayne (Christopher Walken)
• Whatever Happened to Corey Haim? – The Thrills
• Winona - Matthew Sweet
• Candle in the Wind and Roy Rogers - Elton John
• Grace Kelly – Mika
• Marlene on the Wall – Suzanne Vega (Marlene Dietrich)
• Halle Berry (She's Fine) - Hurricane Chris
• Bill Murray – Gorillaz
• Crispin Glover - Starling
• Denzel Washington – Charmillionaire
• David Duchovny – Bree
• Kurt Russell – Ultrasound
• Rosanna – Toto (Rosanna Arquette)
• Cary Grant’s Wedding – The Fall
• Shelley Winters - Charles Jenkins and the Zhivagos
• 2 HB – Roxy Music (Humphrey Bogart)
• Keanuville - Rain Perry (Keanu Reeves)
• Madonna, Sean and Me – Sonic Youth (Sean Penn)
• I Want to Do it With Madonna – The Androids
• Bette Davis Eyes – Kim Carnes or Gwyneth Paltrow
• Kung Fu – Ash (Jackie Chan)
• Steve McQueen - Drive by Truckers
• Where Do You Go To MY Lovely - Peter Starstedt (Marlene Dietrich)

James Dean Tribute list
Many thanks to Peta for a glut of James Dean related songs including: James Dean by the Eagles, Movie Star by Harpo, Rock On by David Essex. Jimmy Dean also cops a mention in Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, Vogue by Madonna, Blue Jeans by Lana del Ray and is the subject of Suede’s Daddy’s Speeding from Dog Man Star… pretty fly for a dead guy.

This week, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day with all-lady bands.

All women mind, no token blokes (I’m looking at you Elastica…)

Centrelinked is on your wireless or streaming live on 98.9 North West FM (http://www.northwestfm.org/) Saturday mornings at 10.30 Melbourne time.

Crap Band Photography Part 2

Welcome back to Day 2 of the Mint Custard Crap Rock Photography exhibition. And before you ask, no, it's just the photography that's crap... All these pictures were taken pushing my Sony Ericsson's enormous 2.0 megapixels to the max so that you, and your descendants, could sample the atmosphere for yourself. Let us dwell no more and get stuck in...

Pop intellectual turned folk troubadour Lloyd Cole strums for the Thornbury Theatre audience in Melbourne. Please be assured that I wasn't actually a kilometre away from the stage - it just seems that way.

And whilst we're at the Thornbury Theatre, let us remember Candle Records heroes the Lucksmiths, captured here for posterity at their last but one ever gig. I attended this concert in my slippers. Which was nice.

A crowd of backpackers chant for an English band at some theatre or other in Sydney. Said band were not as good as said crowd drunkenly believed.

The unmistakably slight silhouette of Mr Jarvis Branson Cocker, erstwhile of Pulp, seen here at the Metro Theatre in Sydney for his first solo tour. Mrs Custard took this, hence the slightly higher than average picture quality.

Mr Cocker again, flanked by Mr Steven Mackey (erstwhile of Pulp) and Mr Martin (M) Craft. Note other person taking photo of same scene. I assume theirs came out better than this.

And last for today, my most favourite picture that I took on my old phone. If you don't know that's Mr Robert Forster, with bassist Adele Pickvance in the background. This was taken in the Studio Theatre, Sydney Opera House during Forster's first post Go-Betweens solo tour. The show was so good this was the only picture I got around to taking.

More from my mixed bag of photographic nuts tomorrow...

Robert Forster, Toff in Town, Melbourne

How strange it must be being Robert Forster. Now in his sixth decade, the former Go-Between has been spending time since the unfairly-enforced end of the group writing about other people’s music for Australian arts and society magazine The Monthly. The first collection of his articles - The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll – was published late last year to critical acclaim. With pieces on Bob Dylan, AC/DC, Nana Mouskouri, Cat Power, Grant McLennan, Franz Ferdinand and even Delta Goodrem, it is as erudite, passionate and funny as you would expect and utterly recommended.

As pleasurable as Forster’s writing is I can’t help thinking that, to quote from his last album ‘something’s not right, something’s gone wrong.’ No doubt he wouldn’t even entertain the idea, but Forster’s own musical talent dwarfs that of the majority of his book’s subjects. In dissecting their music I wonder if he ever questions this peculiar alignment of the celebrity stars or considers just what does one have to do to marry art with commercial success? It certainly doesn’t show in his writing, but he’d have every right.

Tonight’s show is representative of yet another such distortion. As one half of this country’s greatest song-writing partnership, the idea of Robert Forster playing a venue as tiny as the Toff in Town should be too absurd to be true. The room is barely big enough to contain the man himself, never mind the scores eager to see his only Melbourne shows of 2010.

Whether the Toff was deliberately chosen for its intimacy, through a vast underestimation of demand or genuinely reflects Forster’s solo pulling power is unclear but to compare with an artist of similar vintage, an equally solo and acoustic Lloyd Cole sold out the vast Thornbury Theatre late last year. Inevitably tonight is a sell out which makes for a cosier time than expected, but at least everyone has a good view.


The performance itself begins with a curtain slowly pulled back to reveal the six foot three frame of Forster theatrically posed on an old wooden chair like one of Rodin’s statues with a guitar looking like he’s been waiting there for hours. It’s typical Forster, both arch and slightly aloof and part of his repertoire of hammy, eccentrically comical stage moves which also see him appearing to float around his acoustic guitar which seems to remain magically static in mid air.

Without a band tonight’s set differs greatly from the 2008 tour to support The Evangelist, an album which is conspicuous by its absence tonight. Instead Forster punctuates songs from the two Go-Betweens eras with choice cuts from his nineties back catalogue. We are treated to Snake Skin Lady replete with back story, and an eerie Danger in the Past with a foreboding Forster as Kingsley’s Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby from the Water Babies.

Still rightly proud of his contribution’s to the Go-Betweens’ 2000 comeback album the Friends of Rachel Worth, there are outings for German Farmhouse, Spirit and an apparently ad hoc encore of Surfing Magazines. Born to a Family and Darlinghurst Nights are pulled from 2005’s Oceans Apart and offer more evidence that the Go-Betweens reformation was one of the few in rock history worth its salt.

Inevitably though the biggest cheers of the night go to two of the Go-Betweens best known Eighties songs, played out as call-and-response with the crowd. McLennan’s Streets of Your Town (“…shi-i-i-ine…”) and Forster’s Spring Rain (“…falling down like sheets…”) bring a gentle euphoria to the room as well as a few moist eyes. The night concludes in raw beauty with a tender Dive for Your Memory, with the wistful refrain of ‘when I hear you saying that we stood no chance, I’ll dive for your memory, we stood that chance’ gently mouthed by everyone in the room.

Whatever the logic behind tonight’s venue there’s no denying that being able to observe your heroes at this range is a rare treat. In a week where Australia’s biggest news story concerned a cricketer and his girlfriend, it was nice to hide away from it all amongst people who know that Robert Forster - songwriter, critic, author, artist, is – to paraphrase the man himself, one thing greater than all the things that he is together.

Visit Robert’s website here

Buy The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll here

Not The Nine O'Clock News

I am, to the best of my knowledge, the only Huey Lewis and the News fan that I know. This has been the case since I lost contact with my friend Marcus in 1989 with whom I shared an unnatural obsession for Back to the Future; a film heavy with Huey including a cameo from Mr Lewis as a proto-American Idol talent scout. Though I doubt he’d admit it now, Marcus and I were very proud to be Huey fans, because it set us apart from everyone else at school – and in a good way. Whilst our peers were earnestly trying to understand their older siblings’ Genesis and Sting albums, we knew that it wasn’t hip to be so square.

As well as mainlining the band's best albums, Sports and Fore!, we both had the video compilation Fore! and More - eagerly described by one Amazon reviewer as ‘clips of the guys being themselves, clowning around and having a good time. Don't be surprised if you laugh out loud at their antics!’ Quite so. From watching these clips I decided that my favourite band member was Mario Cipollina; the lanky bass player rarely seen without a cig hanging loosely from his lower lip and who clearly influenced Nick Cave’s look throughout the 1990s.

The News' Mario Cipollina: thank you for smoking

As with all pre-teen obsessions my Huey love was over as quickly as it started. Marcus came back from a holiday loaded with INXS and Def Leppard tapes whilst I betrayed my retro-Fifties double denim past with the Pet Shop Boys and Kylie. However one enduring legacy of my Huey days remains; to this day The Power of Love is always the very first song I play on any new audio equipment I buy, and has graced every walkman, tape deck, turntable, mini-disc, cd player, car stereo and iPod I’ve ever owned.

Given all of this you’d expect that I’d be reasonably excited this week with the (ahem) news that Huey and the gang are visiting Australia in March as part of their Still Workin’ for a Livin’ tour. And I am… I mean I was… until I saw that tickets for the gigs start at $125; ‘Gold Class’ is $149. Now I’m not averse to paying silly amounts of money for concerts, even for the right kind of has-been, but the idea that it’s reasonable to charge the same as Leonard Cohen for a pushin' 60 Huey and some of the News (sadly Mario is long gone…) is faintly ridiculous.

Huey et al: note relative coolness of Mario to speckled-suited others

I’ve still never seen them live, so there is part of me that wants to go, just for the same kind of nostalgic silliness that took me to see Def Leppard (thanks again Marcus) with a friend’s mum in 2008. Yet, to put this in even sharper perspective, the Go-Betweens’ ever-dapper Robert Forster has just announced some new Australian dates - ticket price: a mere $33 of your Australian dollars. I’d wager I’m the only person in Australia weighing up these two as competing options.

Sadly $125 feels like a step too far and it looks like I’m destined not to feel the Power of Love live, hear the Heart of Rock and Roll still beating for myself or have another conversation about how Ray Parker Jr ripped off I Want a New Drug for the theme from Ghostbusters. This is a shame, because given the amount of once-cherished credibility I’ve lost amongst sniffy music lovers defending Huey’s name it would have been nice to show the hip that deep down I’m still happy to be square.

Tickets for Huey Lewis and the News are available here. For the more discerning listener, tickets for Robert Forster’s Australian shows can be purchased here.

Mint Custard's Australian Top 40 Countdown: 4

So here we are, the toppermost of the poppermost of the Mint Custard Australian Music Top 40 countdown. I'm sure many of you will have tutted away in despair over the past 10 days. Maybe you'll finally find something to smile about in the list below - I know I do.

10. The Court of King Caractacus - Rolf Harris (1964) - much beloved in Britain, Rolf Harris has long been the man who put the cringe in cultural cringe for many Australians. In all my time here I've only met two or three people who can tolerate him in any way, much less like him. Rolf is one of this countries tallest poppies and yet he has done more to share the wonders of Australia to the world than any other entertainer. Pre-Neighbours, Rolf was the first contact most British kids had with Australia. He painted bush landscapes and cockatoos, played the didge and music sticks. He sang about kangaroos and Darwin and Jindabyne and the Six White Boomers that pull Father Christmas around down here. Eye-opening stuff when you're six. For me, Rolf is a formidable entertainer. He may be an embarrassing older uncle to some Australians, but to others he's a tour de force - an 80 year old tornado that never stops moving and giving his all. He's been on TV for almost 50 years bringing music and art (and a few sick kittens) to the masses. I got his autograph once, back in the UK, but more importantly I finally got to see him play last year at the Sydney Opera House. It was a beautiful summer's evening and he played everything that I wanted to hear - including a snippet of the Court of King Caractacus - and as I looked at the stage I couldn't help but wonder if perhaps this was the guy who started me out on the path to this country in the first place.

9. Demon Days – Robert Forster (2008) - from wonder to heartbreak with a devastatingly beautiful song for a fallen comrade. Demon Days is taken from The Evangelist, Robert Forster's first solo album after the unexpected death of his fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan in 2006 aged just 49. Some of the songs on the Evangelist (including this one) were written by Forster and McLennan for what should have been the Go-Betweens' next album, so whilst Grant doesn't appear in person his spirit is all over Robert's finest solo album. The song Demon Days is affecting enough without the eerie foretelling in the lyrics that 'something's not right, something's gone wrong' or that 'fingers of fate, stretch out and take'. Forster has stated that it's the more jaunty It Ain't Easy which was written explicitly as a tribute to his late partner but the whole of the Evangelist, and especially Demon Days, is a beautiful last stand bugle call for a wonderful man.

8. Come to My Senses – M. Craft (2004) or Martin as his mum calls him... and probably Jarvis Cocker whose band Mr Craft seems to have become a member of since moving to England from his native Canberra. As nice as that must be, personally I'm keen to hear some new music from Martin himself, who briefly threatened to become Australia's answer to Elliott Smith with the 2004 EP I Can See It All Tonight and 2006 full length Silver and Fire. Come to My Senses is a gently-rollicking, shuffling, slightly funky number with layers of vocals and a guitar which echoes Edwin Collins' A Girl Like You - and I've probably still sold it short. You'll have to seek out the I Can See It All Tonight EP to hear it, but for a nice M.Craft taster why not watch the clip for Sweets featuring another lovely Australian export, Rose Byrne.

7. Stop Go – The Tranquilizers (2004) or the self proclaimed laziest band in Melbourne. I saw this scuzzy Australian / New Zealand combo supporting somebody I've long forgotten in Sydney and was taken enough to buy their self titled EP on which Stop Go appears. Their detached, organ-driven sound isn't wholly original, but if you want your rock infused with the ghosts of the Velvet Underground, Clinic, the Charlatans, Spiritualized and drenched in the cool of the Jesus and Mary Chain then this is your song. I played my Dad it yesterday and even he liked it - so keep an eye out for it in second hand shops.

6. Sleep Forever – the redsunband (2004) – yes, another song from 2004; I was surprised myself. For much of that period the Sydney band scene seemed to be about which bunch of pretty boys with guitars would make it first. Much glee then in the fact that the decade's best guitar tune came from the redsunband, a girl-boy-girl dream-pop trio fronted by Sarah Kelly - the diminutive indie sauce-pot that Natalie Imbruglia wants to be. Sleep Forever is a dreamy, sexy, spiky two minute gem without an ounce of fat in its skinny jeans. It has nods to Cat Power and Elastica and yet manages to be more discrete in it's pilfering than Justine Frischmann's former band. When they visited our radio show they came on matching red bicycles which was a nice touch. More power to bands on bikes, I say.

5. The E.L.F – Cockroaches (2008) - when I said that I would only allow one song per artist in this Top 40, I hope I was clear that I didn't include solo careers of people in bands. No? Bugger... well anyway... consider this my first cheat and be warned that it won't be the last... but it's worth it because The E.L.F (aka Gerling's Darren Cross) is worth his place for this hugely catchy indie-dance number about insect infestation, breakfast and genocide. Musically influenced by the lo-fi aesthetic of Cornershop's 1997 album When I was Born for the 7th Time, the beauty of Cockroaches lies in Darren's genial acceptance of his lot amongst his insect invaders. Meanwhile, the video is another piece of lo-fi gold. It allegedly cost $12 which - considering its 250,000 hits on You Tube - must make Kanye's record company weep. Mind you, Kanye still hasn't recorded anything this good either...

4. Know Your Product – The Saints (1978) I'm conscious as I run out of places on this list that there are some Australian bands that I know I will like when I get to hear more of them. David McCombs' The Triffids are one, Radio Birdman another. Ten years is not enough to absorb everything one country has to offer and I'm sure if I repeat this process in a decade this list will look a bit different. And yet some bands leap out of jukeboxes and off the pages of rock encyclopedias in a way that makes you sit up and take notice, even 35 years on. Brisbane's The Saints are one of those bands, one of Australia's holy of holies whose influence is so big that they have a rightful claim to have developed the sound which the Clash and the Sex Pistols took to the masses as punk. I'm Stranded remains their most famous song, but it's Know Your Product - the lead track from their sophomore album - that gets me dancing. With its huge brass riff married to Stooges guitars, Know Your Product leaves behind the punk sound to foreshadow Dexy's Midnight Runners' Searching for the Young Soul Rebels worldview. Vocalist Chris Bailey's delivery also sounds like it made an impression on a young Mark E Smith as he was putting together the Fall's first long player. Maybe the Saints will never be recognised outside of these shores, but those who know know something very special indeed. Do the Professor!

3. Run DNA – the Avalanches - (1997) Ah, the Avalanches, a band whose last album was so glorious that they haven’t felt the need to release even a hint of a follow up for over eight years - a work rate that makes the Stone Roses and Elastica look like sweat shop employees. 2000’s sampladelic Since I Left You, its title track and UK top ten single Frontier Psychiatrist marked the end of a remarkable period for Melbourne’s premier genre-destroying party band during which they went from indie-hopefuls to Madonna-sampling remixers to the stars. In this time they almost single-handedly invented the mash-up, redefined live hip-hop shows and gave Australian dance music a much needed kick up the arse. But it all started with 1997’s El Producto - the sound of Odelay-era Beck, Hello Nasty Beastie Boys and the Lo-Fidelity Allstars emerging triumphant from the carnage of a three-truck pile up, standing on the roofs of their flaming, twisted vehicles, plugging in their instruments and playing an impromptu party to passers-by whilst they wait for the rescue crews. Run DNA (or the ‘it’s in my backpack’ song) is just one piece of sheer brilliance El Producto has to offer, but it’s also my favourite. If you get time have a look at their performance on the ABC’s Recovery and understand why, at least in this corner of the world, we’re holding our breath for their return.

2. Surfing Magazines – the Go-Betweens (2000) A dear friend of mine who is an artist once told me she loves watching people age or (as she put it) 'growing into their faces'. She thinks that some people only blossom when time starts etching lines onto their youthful features. As vain as I am I do think there is some truth in this. Youth usually wins the PR battle, but there are little things worth shouting about as you get older.

For example, it seems like no matter where you start, the playing field has a way of levelling out. High achievers and those with better things to do eventually meet somewhere on common ground where school grades and university degrees don’t matter anymore. Similarly, those of us wracked with adolescent angst for our pimpled faces and dimpled bottoms find ways to survive until we meet other beautiful dimply, pimply types and realise that life isn’t so bad after all. Over time things that are good and important become clearer and, with practice, the horrid and the trivial can be put in their place. They don’t really explain these things at school.

I pontificate thus, because when I think of the Go-Betweens – and specifically founder members Robert Forster and Grant McLennan – they remind me (and forgive the Hallmark sentimentality here) that great art and beauty are ageless.

My introduction to the Go-Betweens was via their first post-reformation album, The Friends of Rachel Worth. For me this meant I had no expectations for them to live up to. When I saw them live I wasn’t hankering for Spring Rain or Cattle and Cane. I was quietly pleased that they played most of the new album because I loved it to death. Most of all I remember Robert – an imposing figure at the best of times; equal parts toreador, dandy and RAF pilot – running around the drum riser for at least five laps at the end of the gig with an energy that belied both his age and gentlemanly demeanour.

The decision to get back together as the Go-Betweens after a ten year hiatus cannot have been easy. Few reformed bands ever make music worthy of their history – even the commercially successful ones. Ageing musicians assure us that they have become more technically accomplished these days and that their next release is their finest work. Yet all too often we end up with a highly polished turd and turn back to their older records that we grew up with.

The Friends of Rachel Worth is the antidote to ageing rocker syndrome. Musically it’s deliciously light and spacious; lyrically as deep as the ocean and as funny as Peter Cook. Without knowing, it would be hard to guess it was the work of a band who disbanded after 12 frustrating years without a bona fide hit, despite being one of the greatest bands - perhaps the greatest - that Australia has produced. Surfing Magazines is Forster's nostalgic paean to innocent youthful kicks and Australia’s best surfing beaches. The topic, delivery and sing-a-long da dah da dah refrain would be wrong from any other band, but in the hands of two men with this much warmth, talent and a point to prove it can't help but feel just right.

We got the Go-Betweens for another six years during which they recorded two more wonderful albums, and with 2005's Ocean's Apart, finally received some of the recognition they deserved. Their decision to go one more time around the block vindicated, it's a relaxed Grant and Robert that feature on their Striped Sunlight Sound DVD playing back through their catalogue on acoustic guitars in McLennan's house and telling the stories of the songs. Much like Johnny Cash's disintegrating voice added gravitas to his American Recordings, so the dry humour, Australian imagery, nostalgia and poetry that infuses their work seemed more appropriate delivered by the middle aged Go-Betweens, as if this was the age they were always meant to be.

With McLennan's death we were all robbed, none more so than Forster who seemed to be finding a new stride. Still, I'm thankful for having seen them at all and even more grateful to them for proving that if you wait long enough, everyone gets their moment in the (striped) sun.

1. There She Goes, My Beautiful World - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (2004)

And so we come to the end, but what a glorious way to finish. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds may seem a rather obvious choice – even if they don’t actually live in Australia - but this was a surprise to me. If I’m honest I truly thought that the Go-Betweens were a shoe-in for the top spot when I first started. I have a few Bad Seeds albums, but I’m no obsessive. Yet this list is about songs and when push comes to shove There She Goes, My Beautiful World inhabits a special place in my head.

Taken from their 2004 (that year again) magnum opus Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, TSGMBW has more angles than an Escher painting. It is simultaneously a treaty on the relationship between artist and muse, a plea to the heavens for inspiration, a call to arms for underachievers, a doffing of the cap to famous writers in history and a love song to life itself.

Cave’s lyrics are perfection. He’s both egotistical (I will ask for nothing but everlasting life), reverential (John Wilmot penned his poetry riddled with the pox, Johnny Thunders was half alive when he wrote Chinese Rocks) and playful (you weren't much of a muse, but then I weren't much of a poet). Elsewhere there are more references to trials and tribulations that faced other writers (Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles while writing Das Kapital, And Gauguin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical) and even a cute slap down of the town where I was born (Philip Larkin stuck it out in a library in Hull) which leaves me more honoured for the mention than offended.

Ultimately Cave is dissecting his writers block (me, I'm lying here, for what seems years, I'm just lying on my bed with nothing in my head) and with that knowledge even the title seems to take on new meaning and increased desperation with every repeat: wonderment (there she goes, my beautiful world!), frustration (there she goes, my beautiful world), and finally anguish (there she goes!) Cave urges others to not to succumb to his fate (if you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!) and, anxious to capture something – anything - he can before it’s too late, begs for help from some higher being (send that stuff on down to me!)

Musically, it is breathless stuff; rollicking, thunderous, highly emotional. Cave’s voice rises and falls across every chapter and sub-chapter, occasionally turning words into howls. You can almost sense his total physical collapse by the end. He’s backed by a celestial sounding choir and the Bad Seeds at full pelt, urging him on with a cacophony designed to wake the Gods. In short, it is ace. Watch this video of the Cave-ster live on Later. You’ll be glad you did.

So there you go. Ten years, forty songs. Hardly representative of a country but representative of the time I’ve spent here. Thanks for reading through and feel free to suggest any of your favourites that you think I might like. Might I suggest that you don’t bother with any Hilltop Hoods or AC/DC though – there should be enough clues above – but I do love a good recommendation if you’ve got one.

Right, that's that. I’m off for a cheese and vegemite sandwich. TTFN.